Be humble: Studies reveal how to increase perceived trustworthiness of scientists
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How can scientists across climate science, medical and psychological topics foster the public's trust in them and their science? Show that they are intellectually humble.
Those are some of the findings of two intellectually humble University of Pittsburgh scientists and their co-authors, using five separate studies totaling 2,034 participants in research published Nov. 18 in Nature Human Behaviour.
"Research has shown that having intellectual humility—which is an awareness that one's knowledge or beliefs might be incomplete or wrong—is associated with engaging in more effortful and less biased information processing," said Jonah Koetke, the principal author and a graduate student under co-author Karina Schumann, associate professor of psychology.
"In this work, we wanted to flip the perspective and examine whether members of the public believe that scientists who are intellectually humble also produce more rigorous and trustworthy research.
